


The Last Draught from the Cup

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Character Death Fix, Fix-It, Gen, Head Injury, Hospitals, Javert Lives, M/M, Memory Loss, Religion, Valjean Confesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 12:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12342291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Javert falls and forgets; forgets, and falls.





	The Last Draught from the Cup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pierogis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pierogis/gifts).



> Thanks to miss m for the incredibly speedy beta! You're the best <3

Javert remembered falling, and the cold.

Something had torn his world from its foundations and cast him into the abyss. A tremendous force seized hold of him, a weight that trapped him like a moth under glass, crushing the breath from his body. He opened his mouth to cry out and swallowed the river. Unable to escape, he plummeted into darkness that was as inexorable as he had always thought Hell would be. 

And when he thought his body had indeed been destroyed and his soul condemned eternally, his eyes opened to the light, and he looked upon the shining face of God.

  
  


*

  
  


Afterwards, there was an indeterminate time of drifting – a time that shifted from light to shadow, where night was day and day was night, caught in between dreams of heaven and hell.

By gradual increments, he began to reawaken to himself. His fingers remembered movement of their own accord; his skin remembered the warmth of the sun.

When he opened his eyes this time, he saw a white room, a window, a summer sky. He remembered the names for those things.

He remembered his own name. 

He found that his tongue also remembered how to form words. “What is this place?”

A woman hastened to his side. She was middle-aged; her face was kindly. She was dressed in a nun’s habit.

“You are in the Hôtel-Dieu.”

This was the hospital on the Île de la Cité. He had been taken ill; this explained much. Such as, why it was that he could not remember anything else.

“How long have I been here?” Had his voice always sounded this rough, this forbidding? There was no way to tell.

The woman frowned as she consulted the papers beside his bed. “You were admitted on the 7th of June. It is already August, Monsieur l’Inspecteur.”

He considered this. He remembered his name, but this appellation was unfamiliar to him. “I am a policeman?” he enquired.

The woman’s frown deepened. “That is what it says in these papers. Javert, Inspector First Class. Do you not remember?”

Javert closed his eyes and reached back in his mind. There was the falling, the dark, the brightness of Heaven – but before that, where his memories had once resided, there was now an unfathomable void. 

“I do not,” he murmured, and wondered why it was that, instead of despair, he felt a curious freedom.

 

*

 

Javert could not say where he had seen the white-haired man before.

Sister Perpetue ushered him over to Javert’s bed. Since his awakening the previous week, Javert had progressed rapidly – to sitting up in bed, to eating foods more solid than soup, to being able, effortfully, to read. The doctors had told him his leg would never fully recover; it was wrapped in bandages and propped up with pillows on one side of the bed.

“This is M. Fauchelevent. He brought you here; told us who you were. He has come every week to visit you.”

Javert inspected the man. He was older than the sister, but he looked hale and strong, his broad frame filling out a modest blue coat and trousers. He clutched his hat in large labourer’s hands.

“It seems I know you, Monsieur?”

Fauchelevent looked somewhat uneasy. “Yes, after a fashion,” he said. “We knew each other in Montreuil.”

Javert had no recollection of Montreuil; it might as well have been Egypt, or Peru, for all he could remember. “I seem to have forgotten,” he said, slowly. “The doctors say that memory loss is a natural consequence of a head injury."

The sister tried to wave Fauchelevent into a nearby chair, but the man apparently preferred to stand. He shifted from foot to foot, twisting the brim of his hat. At last, he ventured, “Do they say this memory loss might be permanent?”

Javert shrugged. “It has been a week, and I still cannot remember my mother, or whether I am married, or even my first name.”

Was that a ghost of a smile on Fauchelevent’s face? “I do not believe you are married,” he said. “And I never knew your first name. You were always Javert to me.”

Javert did not much feel married, either; there was no ring on his finger, no stirring of mind or body when he considered the notion of a wife, or indeed of any woman.

It was rather curious, but now that he gazed upon this man Fauchelevent, he felt a strange sensation somewhere under his breast-bone, in the region of his heart. Perhaps, although he could not now remember it, this was what having this man’s friendship had felt like -- a friendship that had driven Fauchelevent to visit his sickbed, week after week.

Was Fauchelevent disappointed that Javert no longer remembered him? Javert felt a pang of regret, but put it firmly aside. There was no use regretting something that could not be altered.

“If you do not know my first name, Monsieur,” he said, “then it must not have been of much consequence.” 

 

*

 

The next week, he received a visit from a well-dressed man who introduced himself as M. Lecomte, sous-chef of the personnel section of the 1st Bureau of the Prefecture of Police in Paris. 

“The Secrétariat général was notified that you were injured on the night of the insurgency,” he said. “And you yourself had sent the Prefect a note. As you can see, we have been taking responsibility for your medical upkeep. How is your leg?”

“Better.” It was indeed better: Javert was managing to hobble around the hospital as he slowly recovered his strength. He could not say the same for his memory, however, because it had not retained details of the insurgency in question, nor of the note he had apparently sent the Prefect, nor anything of the Prefecture itself.

“That is good. We were glad to hear from the hospital that you had finally awakened. We will of course continue with your medical upkeep, as you were injured while on duty.”

Lecomte cleared his throat. “I should say, M. l’Inspecteur, that your current incapacity is most unfortunate. You were an officer with an exemplary record.”

Although Javert had no recollection of his previous career, this remark filled him with a sense of pride so intense that he had no doubt it was true.

 

*

 

In addition to the medical upkeep, there was also a modest pension. It would seem Javert would not be required to continue to work. 

This troubled him, for he found he was used to work. As autumn wore on and he regained his full strength, he felt the time wear upon him in a way that he had apparently never experienced before.

He filled his days with walks around the corridors of the hospital and in its modest grounds. As he grew more and more capable, he began to assist the sisters on their rounds: pushing a cart of supplies with one hand and holding his cane with the other, making beds and emptying bed-pans, and helping some of the bedridden men to piss. 

He also helped when one or two of the patients had bouts of violence. Illness or injury had robbed them of their mindfulness as well as their memories, making them lash out unreasoningly. This disturbed Javert -- at least he had managed to retain his name, and his own fundamental sense of self, if not the memory of the man he had been.

He also filled the time by reading. Once he had understood from the sisters and Fauchelevent that he had been an officer of the law, he had asked for the statutes and the Code Pénal; although he could not remember the provisions, they struck him as right and familiar.

Less familiar was General Lafayette’s 1789 _Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen_ , but Javert read it as diligently in any case, it being a fundamental declaration upon which the French Republic was established. The notion of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man seemed correct to Javert. Although he was not entirely convinced that the law should establish only penalties that were _"strictly and evidently necessary"_ , or that any man ought to be _"presumed innocent until he is declared culpable"_ , for he could see how such rights might run counter to efficient policing in France, he could understand the General's point that a civilised system of government would ensure justice for all -- even those who were accused of committing crimes, and those who had been tried and punished for committing them.

Sister Perpetue had also placed a Bible at his bedside, which he also read. Javert had no idea if he had been a religious man, but he could not deny that since his miraculous rescue from the abyss, his days had been imbued by a sense of the eternal. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the benevolent shining of the Almighty, and the memory of heaven.

The passage he read and kept returning to was Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, from the Gospel of Matthew:  
  
_“Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them… You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who does you evil. If any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well... Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”_

And then there was this passage:  
  
_“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly…  
Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”_

As Javert read the verses over again, he felt a crawling sense of his own shame. 

In his past life, had he judged wrongly, blind to the evil in his own heart? Had he prayed for those who persecuted him, and shown compassion to the just and unjust alike, as God had required of all men?

He felt as if he stood at the cusp of understanding, upon the threshold of finding that which he had been seeking.

  
  


*

  
  


He discussed such matters with the sisters, and one day he raised them with Fauchelevent, who had continued, diffidently, to visit.

“This does mean that God forgives us all, does it not -- the convict and the cleric? He sees us as the same, the sinner and the saint?”

Fauchelevent bent his white head, humbly. Over the weeks, Javert had come to know him as an unpretentious man: self-deprecating, full of charity. It seemed he had one daughter, a girl called Cosette; that he had previously run a factory in Montreuil; that he now lived a simple life of charity, giving alms to the poor in Paris -- these were details that had been extracted via an interrogative skill which Javert must have cultivated in his past life.

“I believe it is because, to God, we are all sinners. And all worthy of his love.” 

Javert considered this. “You believe all have sinned, and have fallen short of Heaven?” he enquired, looking for the relevant passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans. 

“Yes,” said Fauchelevent, turning his sad eyes to Javert’s. “I am hardly a saint, but I believe there is no one on earth who can say they are sinless, that they do not deserve punishment. And if that is so, then everyone deserves a chance to be redeemed – in the eyes of men, and of God.”

In his mind’s eye, Javert could see the brightness: of a God who had stretched out His hand to extend him mercy, who had showed him His shining face. Javert could not remember his own sins, but he had no doubt they were too manifold to name. Did this God forgive all of them? And if so, would He not also forgive those who were to repent?

“Do you feel yourself redeemed?” he asked Fauchelevent, and was astounded when the man turned pale.

“This is something you should speak of to the sisters, or a man of God,” he muttered, and hastened away. Javert watched him disappear along the corridor, a curious emptiness accumulating in his breast that had not been there before.

 

*

 

His leg ached; it would ache when it rained and when the weather was cold. Now that it was winter it ached all the time. Nonetheless, it was as much recovered as it would ever be. The doctors informed him that he could consider himself discharged.

His lease on his old apartment had expired. The sisters found a modest room for him in accommodations adjacent to the Hôtel-Dieu. He continued to come to the hospital in the morning, leaning on his cane, to assist Sister Perpetue and the other nuns in their work here. On Sundays, he attended services at the hospital chapel, and knew himself forgiven of his sins as he partook of the body and the blood of Christ.

Fauchelevent continued to visit Javert’s room in the same way as he had visited Javert’s sickbed. He accompanied Javert on morning rounds in the hospital, conveying the supplies, comforting the sick. When Javert had no work, they would take walks in the gardens of the hospitals, and across the Île de la Cité. 

Javert wondered if he had been happy in his past life. Pursuing criminals, bringing wrongdoers to justice, seemed like worthwhile pursuits, spanning a career filled to the brim with action. 

But somehow it seemed fitting that here, living as he now did nearer the end of his life than its unknown beginnings, there was satisfaction to be derived as well -- in a cup of libation that had been more than half-drunk, in a quiet existence where he was able to still be of some use.

It was not an unpleasant experience, particularly as he had someone to walk at his side, to help him empty the bed-pans and to assist him in traversing the icy streets of Paris. Fauchelevent said that he had not thought Javert had ever married, and in any case Javert could remember no other life companion save for this white-haired man -- who performed the most menial of tasks without complaint, and whom, as the winter days lengthened, he seemed less and less inclined to do without. 

 

*

 

To Javert each quiet winter day was much the same as the one preceding it, a chalice still amply filled with good wine. But gradually he became aware of a nagging sense that all was not entirely well with his friend, Fauchelevent. The man was reticent and self-effacing at the best of times, but he seemed to grow even quieter, and one day as they sat together in the hospital kitchens, Javert remarked that Fauchelevent had not touched his modest meal.

“My daughter is to be married in the new year.”

“Congratulations,” said Javert, because that was what one said to such news. 

He noticed that his friend did not look as if congratulations were in order. “What is the matter? Do you not like your new son-in-law?”

“It is not that,” Fauchelevent said. He looked as if he would rather have not spoken of this. “It is just… There are things I have not spoken of to Cosette, about her past, and mine. Now that she is to be married, I will need to disclose these things to her new husband.”

Javert thought about this. “Certainly parents would be within their rights to withhold from full disclosure, for the sake of their children,” he said. “One might even argue that would be responsible behaviour, for children do not understand many things. But when those children are grown, then would be the proper time to disclose.”

“Indeed,” said Fauchelevent, miserably. 

Javert stared meaningfully at him, until he continued: “The truth is that I am not Cosette’s father. Instead, I was a passer-by. She was an orphan, without either father or mother. She needed me. Children are so weak that the first comer, even a man like me, can become their protector.”

“Well, then, this is a matter easily remedied,” Javert remarked, once Fauchelevent had finished speaking. He took Fauchelevent’s hand in his, in the way that he had learned to comfort the sick in the hospital; his friend’s large hand was hot, as if he was being plagued by a fever. 

Javert persisted, “You cared for an orphan as if she was your legal child. If you wish to convey your estate to her, I believe you may apply for friendly guardianship under the law. I have read the procedure in the Code Civile.” 

Javert thought his solution would set Fauchelevent’s mind at ease, but his friend sighed even more gustily. “The matter is not so simple,” he said slowly. “I have not been totally frank, Javert, but I cannot reveal more at this time without jeopardising the child’s chance at happiness.”

“I do not understand,” Javert said, but Fauchelevent merely sighed and clasped his hand and would not say more.

 

*

 

The January of the new year passed, and then February came. There was frost on the trees outside the hospital, and one day Ultime Fauchelevent came with his right arm in a sling.

Javert asked Fauchelevent how he had hurt his hand, and his claim to have done so in the garden of his home held a note of obfuscation.

"I will not be able to come to-morrow. It is the day of my daughter's wedding," Fauchelevent said. 

The look in his friend's eyes was as inexplicable as the strange bandage on his hand. Javert said, reassuringly, "The patients and the bed-pans will still be here when you come the following morning."

"The following morning -- ah, I am not sure if I will be available then, either," Fauchelevent began, and then he looked more closely at Javert's face. In a changed tone, he said, "Very well, Javert, I will come to-morrow, after all. Before I -- I will come to see you, then."

 

*

 

Fauchelevent was as good as his word, arriving early in the morning of the 17th. His eyes were red-rimmed, and the bandage around his hand looked fresh.

"I wish to tell you something," he said. 

Javert looked on, unsurprised, as Fauchevent took his arm out of the sling and unwrapped the bandage. His hand looked completely uninjured.

"You have not really hurt your hand at all, have you?" he enquired. 

Fauchelevent looked surprised. "You could tell?"

"I knew you were hiding something about this. And, you mentioned that you have been less than frank. Are you ready to tell me why?"

Fauchelevent closed his eyes and then opened them; his gaze was desolate. "I pretended to have an injury so that I would not sign a false name to Cosette's marriage documents," he said. "As I have said, I am not the father of Cosette. I am a peasant of Faverolles. I earned my living by pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, but Jean Valjean."

The name had a strangely familiar air. Javert looked at the man. He was melancholy yet tranquil. "I see," Javert said. "But why the deception?"

The man who had just named himself Jean Valjean bent his head, and continued:

"It is because I am an ex-convict. I was nineteen years in the galleys for theft. Then I was condemned for life, for a second offence. At the present moment, I have broken my ban."

Javert considered the tanned skin, the weathered hands, the still-powerful shoulders, and wondered why he was not more astonished. Perhaps this was something he had known in his past life, and had always known, although he could not now remember it.

Valjean continued, "To-day, Cosette passes out of my life; our two roads part. Henceforth, I can do nothing for her. She is Madame Pontmercy. Her providence has changed. I complete the restitution by announcing my true name, to you, and then later this morning, to her husband... And, you see, I have a particular reason for desiring that you should know who I am."

Jean Valjean looked Javert full in the face.

"I have a thread in my heart, which keeps me fast. Had I been able to tear out that thread, to break it, to undo the knot or to cut it, I should have been safe. Your amnesia seemed to be permanent; I was not at any risk from you."

Jean Valjean folded his arms and glared at the floor beneath his feet.

"But in your infirm state, you welcomed me into your life as someone presented to you as your old friend. We have been living in this way, working side by side, when all along ---"

His voice suddenly rose in thundering tones:

"---when all along, I have been deceiving you as well. I was nineteen years in the galleys, where you served as a guard. You pursued me in Montreuil, and it was you who saw to it that I was put away for life, for the second offence. After I escaped and fled to Paris, our paths crossed, and you have been hunting me until your accident."

Javert was himself surprisingly calm. "That probably explains why I found you so familiar," he commented. "Nineteen years, you say? It is not the normal tariff for theft."

"Truly, it is not. The conditions in the galleys were unspeakable; I tried to escape three times. I knew no better."

Javert had recently read Vidocq’s treatise on prison conditions; he had to concede they did sound inexcusable. "Why did you steal?" he wanted to know.

"The first time? I stole a loaf of bread. My family was starving. The second offence was a mistake. I took a coin off a little boy, and the prosecutor believed me to be part of a gang of brigands, because of my record." 

"Nineteen years sounds like you had been more than sufficiently punished for your offences. Why did I keep pursuing you?"

"Because you were a policeman who did not believe a criminal could change, or that a sinner could ever obtain redemption."

Javert wondered about this. The policeman that he had been almost seemed another person altogether. If not for Fauchelevent -- for Valjean -- he would not have known that other man, would not have known he had _been_ that other man.

"How did I really come to the hospital?"

"I've never explicitly lied to you, Javert. I watched you throw yourself into the river, and I went in to fetch you, and I brought you here."

This was a shock. Javert asked, slowly, "Why would I have tried to kill myself?"

"I'm not sure. The day before the river, we met on the barricades, where the insurgents had captured you as a police spy. You had believed I would kill you then, out of revenge, and when I set you free instead, it seemed to unhinge something within you."

Javert did believe it, strangely enough. The man he had been had clearly been so unrelenting, so blinkered by the log in his own eye; he would have been so unhinged by a convict's mercy that he tried to put an end to his own life.

"Why did you choose to tell me this now? I still don't remember, and it seems I never will."

Jean Valjean lowered his voice once more, in a voice of despair.

“I will tell you that it was not a resolution that was easy to take. I have wrestled with it all night long. But as long as I remained in your life, as long as I remained in Cosette’s life, I would have continued in a silence that would have been a lie, and a fraud, and cowardice. I could not continue allowing you to treat me as your friend, knowing that, if you were in your right mind, you would have had me seized and arrested and thrown back down into the galleys. And it would have been a lie that I told every day, as I have lied to you every day that I have come to visit and not disclosed the truth.”

Jean Valjean paused, and then said, “Why did I lie? In order to be happy. I have been happy, these few months, learning to care for the man of whom I used to be so fearful. It has become precious to me, that we managed to reach an understanding, and that we have been working to help people together. But I do not have the right to be happy. I am a convict and I stand outside of life, Monsieur."

He drew a painful breath, and hurled this final word:

"In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live; to-day, in order to live, I will not steal a name."

Javert was silent. He had much to absorb about Valjean’s story, and this was a misery that could not be easily interrupted.

It seemed the man he had been had not believed a criminal like Valjean could have been redeemed; that man had not cared whether Valjean’s crime had been cold-blooded murder or a desperate theft to feed a starving family. And yet Valjean had shown compassion to that man; had saved him twice, and was now trying to make his confession to Javert as if he was still that same blind, intractable, merciless man.

However, he was that man no longer. Shorn of that man’s memories, saved by God, he was a new creation: the old having passed away. This new man had the convict at the apex of his life, and counted that convict as an esteemed friend, and more besides.

Finally, Javert said, “You are giving up this name, and making this confession to me, because you do not wish to live, is that right?”

“It is a sin to take a life,” Valjean said, which was not an answer to Javert’s question.

“If so, I sinned when I tried to take mine, and you saved me from that sin,” said Javert, and Valjean could not meet his eyes. “Would it help you if I were to tell you that I understand why you did what you did, and that I forgive you?”

Valjean staggered as if under a blow. He lifted his shocked gaze to Javert’s. He could not speak.

Javert continued, in a blaze, unsure of what he was saying: “It is in the same way as you seem to have forgiven me for my pursuit of you when you had stolen in order to feed your family, for my condemnation of you because you were an ex-convict. You said you saved me when I was captured, and again when you pulled me from the river. Let me see if I can repay you.”

“It is impossible,” Valjean said. He took hold of Javert’s lapels. “I cannot keep living this lie, can you not see that?”

“Perhaps you can’t,” said Javert. He put his hands over Valjean’s; as always, the man’s skin felt hot, as if goodness itself was a source of physical warmth. “But I require you to keep living this _life_ , and if what it takes is that you must endure the lie for now, why then, you must indeed endure it.”

“Why?” Valjean could hardly form the word.

“Because God has shown me mercy. He has given me a clean slate, he has stripped from me the memory of my sin, and has opened my eyes to the truth, at last.”

“And what truth is that?”

Javert placed his hand on Valjean’s cheek. He could not remember if he had ever touched anyone in this way; it certainly felt like the first time. 

“That you are a good man. That I was wrong to have pursued you. That you have the right to live, and be happy, as any civilised man. And that I do not wish to be without you.”

“In truth, I also do not wish to be without you," said Valjean, and placed his hand over Javert's. "But I need to inform Marius of my deception, and after that I will hardly be allowed to continue living the life I led as Monsieur Fauchelevent."

"You will not," Javert agreed. For some reason, a fierce joy had gripped him, perhaps because Valjean had not shied away from his touch, and was looking at him now with hesitant welcome. These last sips from a cup less than half full -- they would be enough, more than enough. "You will instead live your life openly as Jean Valjean. You will be forgiven your deception -- if I can forgive it, certainly your son-in-law can. He is a lawyer, is he not? Perhaps he will be able to help you obtain a legal pardon. And above all, you will continue to live."

Valjean closed his eyes. For an excruciating moment, Javert thought he would turn and flee. Then he opened his eyes, and smiled at Javert, as if he also had seen the face of God. 

He said, "I cannot believe there would be so much mercy, still, for me."

"There was enough mercy to let me live my life again," Javert said. "And now ... It is very strange, but I wish to live what is left of it with you." 

"If that is so, then I will try too," said Valjean, and clasped Javert’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Sewerverse Anniversary, Pi! You asked for amnesia fic; hope this pinch hit hits the spot for you <3
> 
> The dialogue in the last section mirrors the famous confession from the chapter in the Brick, for which this story is named.


End file.
